Esther glanced at Squire Marshall and saw there were tears in his eyes. Forgetting, amidst all this horror, their relative positions in life – he the squire and she his tenant – she put her arm through his and squeezed it tightly. Seeking some kind of comfort himself, she felt him grip her hand and hold on to it, whilst they looked around them. They didn’t speak, their throats constricted by the sights they saw. Beside them young Arthur sat white-faced and silent.

The pony plodded on slowly, making for the area where the squire had been told some of the biggest battles of the war had been fought, the place where he believed his son had died. The sky was grey with heavy cloud and a fine drizzle clung to their clothes and seeped through making them feel chilled. At last they crested a rise in the ground and there it lay before them, stretching as far as they could see through the mist and the gloom, the land ravaged by years of war.

Wordlessly, the three of them climbed down from the trap and leaving the pony standing, they walked forward, drawn by the awful sight before them, mesmerized by the destruction they were witnessing.

No birds flew overhead, no cattle grazed the land. As far as Esther could see there was not a speck of green. No blade of grass, no living leaf, only thick, greasy mud. Shell-torn trees, blasted limb from limb, struck out grotesquely like burnt sticks. Esther looked down into the trench below where she was standing. In the bottom was at least six inches of murky, stagnant water and the slimy, sloping sides were littered with empty cans, discarded weapons, even items of muddy, torn clothing. A single boot stuck up out of the mud. Everywhere ran the rats. A huge brown one came running down the trench, stopping every now and then to sniff and search. It paused just below Esther and sat up on its haunches, staring up at her boldly. The rats back at home in her barn would have scuttled away at her approach but this monster was tame – frighteningly tame. It dropped down on to all fours and sniffed at the boot then pushed its head into the top and with sharp teeth began tearing at the grey, slimy pulp oozing from the boot.

Esther gave a gasp and clamped her hand over her mouth as the bile rose in her throat. The rat was pulling at rotting human flesh.

She turned away, closing her eyes and her mind against an appalling thought.

Supposing that had been Jonathan’s boot. Reason told her not to be foolish. But it had belonged to some young soldier just like Jonathan – some young man whose foot had been blasted away by a shell and left to rot in the trenches.